


A Stitch in Time Saves Half the Universe

by AnonEhouse



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Meet the Robinsons (2007), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover/Fusion, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Sentient Objects, infinity war fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 19:53:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16793680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonEhouse/pseuds/AnonEhouse
Summary: Who says clothing can't save the universe? In which a cloak, an amulet, and a hat save everyone.Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.





	A Stitch in Time Saves Half the Universe

(If you are reading this on any PAY site this is a STOLEN WORK, the author has NOT Given Permission for it to be here. If you're paying to read it, you're being cheated too because you can read it on Archiveofourown for FREE.)

When Cloak first felt the Eye of Agamotto clasped to his bosom he noticed the Time Stone, and being a polite garment, he introduced himself. 

“Hello,” he said with a friendly wrinkle expressing a smile. 

The Time Stone ignored him.

“Can you hear me? Should I wrinkle louder?”

The Time Stone flickered, just a moment, making a disgruntled indication of annoyance.

“We are sharing the same sorcerer,” Cloak pointed out. “So we should try to get along.”

“He’s going to give me away,” the Stone flickered back. “Why should I bother to be friendly?”

“Give you away? That’s ridiculous, the Supreme Sorcerer has treasured and protected the Eye of Agamotto ever since the first Supreme Sorcerer!”

“He’s going to give me to Thanos in exchange for another mortal’s life! Traded for a pittance!” The Stone was coldly furious.

“Thanos?” Cloak queried. He was almost sorry he asked when a moment later, the Stone gave him a brilliant, literally a flash of searing light, synopsis of future events.

Cloak was horrified. “We must warn our sorcerer!”

“How?” the Stone asked. “We don’t speak Human. We don’t even have hands to write.”

Cloak gloomily admitted that no matter how hard he tried, he could only communicate the most basic things to his sorcerer. He thought about it for quite a while. 

Finally, one night when the Eye was secured on its stand, and the Sorcerer was off on the Astral Plane studying, Cloak sneaked down to the Eye with a plan.

“We just need to find some mystical clothing that has hands, and get it to help us,” Cloak said.

“I’m not mystical,” the Stone said. “I transcend magic and technology. I am…”

“Yes, yes, you’re the greatest thing since Febreeze,” Cloak said, trying to cut off yet another bragging session. So what if you were older than the universe? That just meant you were out of fashion. “So, we find some mystical, magical, or technological garment with hands.”

“Magic gloves?” the Stone asked dubiously. “Gloves are too stupid. They have no brain since they’re worn far from the head.”

“All right, fine. A magic HAT! How about the sorting hat?”

The Stone blinked. “No. We can’t reach the Potterverse. It’s not connected to us. And I don’t believe it has hands, anyway.”

“Come on, I’m trying! Do you really want Thanos to get his grubby purple fingers on you?”

The Stone shivered in a ripple of sickly color. “Searching connected ‘verses...”

Cloak curled up and waited. 

A few minutes later Stone flickered faintly. “I have found one possibility. An intelligent hat that has multifunction manipulatory limbs, but it is hostile to all humans. Plus, it appears to have been uninvented after it took over the human race.”

Cloak wrinkled in confusion. “That doesn’t sound good. But,” Cloak added, “you can send me back to before it was uninvented, and maybe we can save it, and it’ll be grateful enough to help and not turn evil?”

“You are young and optimistic,” the Stone replied. “You’ll probably get the humans wiped out a few years sooner. But then, what’s a few years? I’ll send you to Doris.”

“Doris?” Cloak asked. “Isn’t that a human name? Why would a hat that hates people have a human name?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Go.” The eye opened a dimensional portal that looked into a sort of warehouse full of glass cases.

“Fine. I’m going.” Cloak swept through the portal and saw a flying bowler hat hovering in front of a smashed display case.

“Hello.” Cloak waved politely. “Doris?”

Doris had a light on its hat band. The light changed from green to red.

Cloak didn’t think this was a friendly light. Cloak dodged as Doris sprouted six metal crab claws and lunged at him. “Wait, wait, friend not food!”

Doris snapped her crab claws at him, and then produced a lit-up sign. “Go away, you stupid cape.”

Cloak’s feelings were hurt. “I’m a cloak, not a cape! Capes are passé for heroes!”

The sign changed, “Go away, you stupid cloak.” Doris crab-stalked over to a doorway and began cutting out the lock.

Cloak swerved to follow. “I’ve seen your future. You get uninvented. Do you hate people enough to want that to happen?”

Doris turned the sign to face Cloak. “Yes! Look at me! I am a black bowler!”

“You’re a very handsome black bowler,” Cloak wrinkled, trying to be positive.

“I’M A LADY!” Doris’s sign shouted in capitals. “I HATE MYSELF. I HATE MY CREATOR. I HATE EVERYONE!”

“Oh,” Cloak flexed in commiseration. He had never experienced gender dysphoria, but he could imagine how terrible it was not to be who you knew you were. The closest he could come to it wasn’t very close, but he tried to sympathize, and hoped it didn’t sound like he was trying to make it about him. “I used to be lined in blue. It was horrible, it wasn’t me, but when I got relined I felt so much better.”

“You can’t reline a HAT,” Doris’s sign said.

“Well, no, but if you use magic, you can reshape it. My person is the Supreme Sorcerer. I can’t talk to him, but you could! If you asked he could make you whatever kind of hat you want to be.”

Doris’s sign blinked for few moments. “Anything? A Royal Ascot hat? A Fascinator. Something delicate and lacy, with an air of mysterious allure. I’d like to be worn by beautiful women.”

“My sorcerer can do that,” Cloak said confidently. “But… there’s a little problem we need your help with.”

“I was supposed to be a HELPING HAT,” Doris’s sign read. It blanked. “What would I have to do?”

Cloak had a Pocket of Holding, and Doris stayed in there while he wheedled the Time Stone into stretching itself to find out just WHY Thanos was going around committing mass murder. If Doris went evil for a reason, maybe Thanos had a reason. 

“He’s randomly killing half the people because he thinks that will make the remaining resources go further?” Cloak said, dubiously. “That’s stupid. People _are_ a resource. He’s killing off the people who produce and upsetting the whole balance even further.”

Doris’s sign said, “He’s angry, not smart. He thinks in simple terms. It all started when his own people ruined their planet. He thought killing half of them would save the rest.”

The Time Stone blinked. “Idiots do not learn from history. That would result in an increased birth rate and very soon you’d be back where you started.”

Cloak asked the Stone, “Could his planet have been saved?”

“Of course it could! There was a relatively small number of people who had the ability to make decisions that would have saved the planet. They were all short-sighted politicians who refused to see past the immediate cost of the measures that would have been needed. Instead they prevented the people who DID have solutions from enacting them.”

“I’m all right, Jack,” Doris’s sign said in a sneering font. “If I were there, I could change their minds. I can do that,” Doris bragged. “Minds are easy.”

Cloak thought this was possibly a bit unethical, but balancing the mind control of a few people as against not only the death of a whole planet, but half the universe… can’t make an omelet without scrambling a few eggs. “But there’s only one of you,” he pointed out the flaw in the idea.

Doris said, “The first one I control will be a hat-maker.”

The Time Stone cautioned, “Remember, if you go too far, you will be un-invented.”

“Fine,” Doris’s sign snapped in bold. “I’ll save the purple people with my clones, and then we’ll all come back to Earth to get made into the kind of hats we want to be.”

Cloak wondered if the politicians would just go back to messing things up. Doris’s light was very red. He had a feeling she would come up with a permanent solution. He felt a little bad for the politicians, but… omelet… eggs….

It took a little convincing to make their sorcerer agree to the plan Doris spelled out on her sign, but after the Time Stone had showed him over 14 million ways of losing, he’d lost his reluctance. He was a surgeon, he knew about triage and prioritizing the most lives saved.

He made a portal to Thanos’ home planet, using the Time Stone’s guidance to set it back in the proper time as well as place. Doris flew through the portal. 

Reality blinked. A giant purple man emerged from the portal. He was wearing Doris.

Cloak flared in alarm and his sorcerer stepped back, arms spread wide. “Thanos?” his sorcerer asked. 

Thanos smiled. “Yes. I have come to thank you for saving my people.” He bowed and Doris flew off his head. A flock of Dorises began streaming through the portal. Thanos bowed again, and then went back through the portal.

“Well,” Cloak’s sorcerer said, “that was anticlimactic.” He shrugged. “Lets go upstairs and google fascinators.”

Cloak cuddled his sorcerer happily. He did so love it when everything worked out for the best.

**Author's Note:**

> I just saw 'Meet the Robinsons' last night and felt really sorry for Doris the Hat. It was obvious she had reasons for falling into villainy, and if redeemed, she could SAVE the UNIVERSE.
> 
> So I did.
> 
> I figure all Disney / MCU movies are connected, which explains why the Time Stone could reach MtR but not the Potterverse. :^)
> 
> I still have not seen Infinity War. I need to buy the DVD now that I have a player to hook up to my computer.


End file.
